UN experts urge India to restore internet and social media services in Jammu and Kashmir

[yt_dropcap type=”square” font=”” size=”14″ color=”#000″ background=”#fff” ] R [/yt_dropcap]aising alarm over the impact of internet and social media restrictions imposed by authorities in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, United Nations human rights experts have called on the Government to protect the right to freedom of expression and to pursue an open and democratic dialogue to address the region’s social and political conflicts.

In a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders stressed that the scope of the restrictions also undermined “the Government’s stated aim of preventing dissemination of information that could lead to violence.”

“The internet and telecommunications bans have the character of collective punishment [and] fail to meet the standards required under international human rights law to limit freedom of expression,” said Mr. Kaye in the news release.

“Denying such access disrupts the free exchange of ideas and the ability of individuals to connect with one another and associate peacefully on matters of shared concern,” added Mr. Forst.

The ban was imposed on 17 April following widespread student demonstrations.

According to information from the media and individuals in Kashmir, the Government blocked access to 22 websites and applications, including the messaging service WhatsApp, and social media Facebook and Twitter, noted the news release.

3G and 4G internet data services for mobile phones and other devices have also been suspended.

The news release also noted that since 2012, there have been an estimated 31 reported cases of social media and internet bans in the Indian state and such developments seemed to be a worrying pattern aimed at curbing protests and social unrest in the region.

“We call on the Indian authorities to guarantee freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir and to seek a solution for the social and political conflicts of the region through an open, transparent and democratic dialogue,” the experts said.

Further in the release, the human rights experts also recalled the concerns raised by the UN Human Rights Council – the central inter-governmental body within the UN system responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe – over online disruptions and the call upon UN Member States to avoid such shutdowns.

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

The Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar has emerged as a major
loophole in a tightening military and economic noose and ever harsher US
sanctions that President Donald J. Trump, reluctant to be sucked into yet
another war, sees as the best way to either force Tehran to its knees or
achieve regime change.

US officials said privately that the exemption was also a nod to India
that sees Chabahar as vital for the expansion of its trade with Afghanistan and
Central Asian republics.

They said it was moreover an anti-dote to the Chinese backed port of
Gwadar just 70 kilometres down the Arabian Sea coast in the troubled
neighbouring Pakistani province of Balochistan.

That may be a long shot, certainly as long as India like much of the
rest of the world is restricted by the US sanctions in its economic and commercial
dealings with Iran.

The exemption comes however as Chinese security concerns in Balochistan
as well as Pakistan at large are mounting.

China’s massive US$45 billion plus Belt and Road-related infrastructure
investment in Pakistan with Gwadar and Balochistan at its core has become a
prime target for nationalist insurgents that has officials in Beijing worried.
It has also reinforced long-standing doubts in some circles in Beijing about
the viability of the project.

“China, you came here (Balochistan) without our consent, supported our
enemies, helped the Pakistani military in wiping our villages. But now it’s our
time… Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) guarantees you that CPEC will fail miserably
on the Baloch land. Balochistan will be a
graveyard for your expansionist motives,” a
commander of the BLA’s Majeed Brigade said in a video message released a week
after militants stormed a hilltop, highly secured luxury hotel in Gwadar,
killing five people.

The BLA claimed a month earlier responsibility for an attack on a convoy
on a highway leading out of Gwadar in which 14 Pakistani military personnel
died and an assault last year on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.

The attacks and threats have prompted Chinese sceptics of China’s
massive investment in Pakistan to express their doubts more publicly.

The situation on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border is
complicated by suspicions that the violence also has links to the rivalry
between Iran and Saudi Arabia and that the Baloch provinces of Pakistan and
Iran could become a stage for a proxy war.

Mr. Rana noted that Iran’s influence in Pakistani Balochistan was
visible in oil smuggled across the border, Iranian products in grocery shops
and the supply of electricity to the coastal strip of Makran that includes
Gwadar.

“For Pakistan, the security cost of CPEC is increasing which could
frustrate the Chinese as well as foreign and local investors,” Mr. Rana warned.

That could change if the Saudi Iranian component of the low level Baloch
insurgency spins out of control with the escalating stand-off between the
United States and Iran.

Iran appears to have pinned its hopes that Chabahar will be shielded
from the impact of regional tensions on the perceived US geopolitical need to
protect India’s interest in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Said Pir Mohammad Mollazeh, an Iranian Afghanistan and Central Asia
scholar: “US long-term geopolitical interests, due to the lack of relations
with Iran, require India to maintain its position in the region and protect
India as a partner in Central Asia… Chabahar port is considered to be a very
important and strategic which is an opportunity for our
country to enable Iran to reduce its sanctions by means of economic exchanges in Chabahar.”

Related

Pointless Colonial Massacres and Post-Colonial Wars and Killings on the Indian Subcontinent

Two colonial mass killings from the
twentieth century are always remembered: The Qissa Khwani
Bazaar massacre on April 23, 1930 in
Peshawar (then India, now in Pakistan) was the result of peaceful
demonstrations protesting the arrest of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan who had called
for a nonviolent movement of ‘patience and righteousness.’ Authorities
nervous at the size of the crowds called in the military. The local
Garhwal Rifles refused an order to fire. A special city disturbance
column and four armored cars were sent for; they did not. The number
of dead vary with the source ranging from
20 to 400. Whatever the figures, the incident
legitimized the protest movement and creating a new Gandhi of the northwest in
Ghaffar Khan.

Pakistan since independence has had
insurgencies — in the Northwest where Peshawar is located,in Baluchistan
(ongoing) and, the worst of all in its eastern half in 1971 that led to
the birth of Bangladesh. Estimates of casualties range from 300,000 to 3
million.

This year is the centenary of the
notorious Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar. April 13, 1919 was the day of Baisakhi, a major Sikh
festival, so people had come to the holy city from surrounding Punjab villages
and gathered to listen to speakers. They were also unhappy with the
deportation of independence leaders Dr. Saifuddinn
Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal out of state to
Dharamsala. The protesters were mostly Sikh, the leaders being deported a
Muslim and a Hindu, and India then secular in the minds of the people.

Brig-General Reginald Dyer the local
commander had banned all meetings. To him the crowd gathering in the Bagh
was a challenge to authority. He took a contingent of Gurkha troops and
proceeded forthwith to disperse what to him was an illegal assembly. It is
worth noting that Nepali Gurkhas are alien to the area, speak a different
language, and look more like Tibetans. The force took up positions on a
raised bank at the main entrance and were ordered to fire on the unarmed
crowd. People tried to flee toward the other exits and in the stampede
some were trampled. Yet the firing continued for an incomprehensible ten
whole minutes using up 1650 rounds and leaving hundreds dead and over a
thousand wounded.

No respite for the Sikhs despite their
anti-Muslim stance during the 1947 partition. In 1984 following Indira
Gandhi’s assassination by a Sikh bodyguard — itself a result of her military
response killing Sikh religious zealots occupying the Amritsar Golden Temple —
riots broke out. An estimated 8000-17,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi and Haryana. The connivance of the Delhi police and the
Congress party has long been suspected, and Human Rights Watch has complained
of no prosecution for the killings. Ditto for the perpetrators of the
Muslim pogrom in Gujarat during Narendra Modi’s rule.

While the callousness of the Qissa Khwani
Bazaar and Jallianwalla Bagh incidents horrifies, the number killed pales in
comparison to what has happened since independence. Within months of
freedom, India invaded the independent principality of Hyderabad, allied to the
British since the 18th century. An estimated 200,000 people
were killed and many fled to
Pakistan.

In Kashmir, a decades long
struggle for some kind of autonomy has cost tens
of thousands of lives. Estimates vary from 40 to 80
thousand. Some Indians have a
conscience: Long critical of India’s stance, the Booker Prize winning
novelist and peace activist Arundhati Roy has called the Modi government
‘reckless’ in its policy there.

The Muslim minority in India appears to be
intimidated and abused. A recent feature story on Chamanganj, a Muslim neighborhood in Kanpur, illuminates the
distress and discrimination experienced by Muslims. The Congress
candidate never visits; the BJP candidate shows up hoping to capture some votes
but his party’s policy is notoriously anti-Muslim.

The violence against Christians is also on
the rise. Opendoorsusa.org
reports over 12,000 incidents last year, while
the number of churches attacked rose dramatically from 34 to 98. It has
now become the 10th most dangerous country in the world for Christians on the
2019 World Watch List.

A secular India, the pride of Indian
independence leader and its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is under
threat. In its place, a muscular Hindu nationalist agenda enforced by
goons from nationalist organizations has been labeled “saffron
terror”. The Hudson
Institute called these attacks “not inchoate mob violence, triggered by … insult; rather they
involved careful planning by organized Hindu extremists …”

The record is surprising yet
evident: Independent India has killed hundreds of times more people than
the Dyer atrocity, and the present-day Indian subcontinent is becoming a
noticeable contrast to the relatively secular country of 1919. In India
itself, the Modi government and its affiliates by encouraging Hindu nationalism
must shoulder the blame.

Related

The Durand Line Issue

The Durand Line is a 2,200-kilometre
debated border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was set up in 1893 between
Sir Mortimer Durand, a British negotiator and respectful hireling of the
British Raj, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Afghan Amir, to settle the constrain of
their individual circles of impact and make stride discretionary relations and
exchange between the two nations. Afghanistan was considered by the British as
a free state at the time, in spite of the fact that the British controlled its
remote issues and discretionary relations. The single-page assertion, dated 12
November 1893, contains seven brief articles, counting a commitment not to work
out obstructions past the Durand Line.

A
joint British-Afghan boundary overview took put beginning from 1894, covering a
few 1,300 km of the border. Built up towards the near of the British-Russian
“Great Game”, the coming about line set up Afghanistan as a buffer
zone between British and Russian interface within the locale.

The line, as somewhat adjusted by the
Anglo-Afghan Settlement of 1919, was acquired by Pakistan in 1947, taking after
its independence. The forced Durand Line cuts through the Pashtun tribal ranges
and assist south through the Balochistan locale, politically partitioning
ethnic Pashtuns, as well as the Baloch and other ethnic bunches, who live on
both sides of the border. It demarcates Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and
Gilgit-Baltistan of northern and western Pakistan from the northeastern and
southern areas of Afghanistan.

From a geopolitical and geostrategic
viewpoint, it has been depicted as one of the foremost unsafe borders within
the world. Although Pakistan recognized the Durand Line as an international border,
it remains to a great extent unrecognized by Afghanistan. In 2017, in the midst
of cross-border pressures, previous Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that
Afghanistan will “never perceive” the Durand Line as the
international border between the two countries.

The Durand line remains a bone of
contention between the two nations and a primary reason why Afghanistan and
Pakistan have yet failed to establish cordial relations. Afghanistan claims a
chunk of the KPK and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan on the basis that it was
acceded to Pakistan, though it was originally a part of Afghanistan, with
people dwelling on each sides having the same culture, language and way of life
etc.

What is very clear is that relations
between the two states have been tinged with hostility ever since Pakistan
became an independent state in 1947. There are mainly two interrelated,
historical reasons for this: the problem of the “Durand Line” — the shared but
disputed border of the two countries; and Afghan support for the “Pakhtoonistan”
movement in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP)

The questions is answered by both nations
with a bias towards their respective national interest in mind, both Pakistan
and Afghanistan claiming areas divided by the Durand line as their legitimate
part.

Major accusations of Afghanistan over the
Durand line are: its legitimacy period has terminated; it was in the original
agreement between the British and the Afghans claimed its validity only for 100
years, which has expired. Nevertheless, neither Afghan government, nor the
foremost dynamic advocates of this see have ever displayed any plain instrument
demonstrating their claim. Nor do we discover, upon looking at the pertinent
archives, i.e. the Durand Line assertion and the rest of the records confirmed
until 1896 by the individual committees for assurance and boundary of the
British-Afghan border, any arrangement confining the term of the understanding
to 100 year time. It is undoubtedly a riddle how this supposition might spread
over the nation without being addressed at all.

Another claim of Afghanistan in the
de-legitimizing the boarded is that the assertions relating to it collapsed
when the British exchanged powers to Pakistan. The agreement was done with
British India and not with Pakistan. This was a main reason that Afghanistan
was one of the very few countries that opposed the addition of Pakistan in the
UN- since it alleged it of illegally annexing Afghanistan’s territory.

One more accusation to not accept the
boarder comes as the understandings were persuasively forced upon
Afghanistan-it is ethically unmerited- is certainly an issue worth encourage
talk and contention. In any case, whereas one may concede the dispute to be
fair and genuine, it remains deficiently to refute the status of the Durand
Line as an international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Durand
Line understanding of 1893 isn’t the sole point of reference in border
assessment. At slightest other four assertions (of 1905, 1919, 1921 and 1930),
which had the assent of both sides, must be counseled. Clearly, Afghanistan
cannot claim that all of the afterward four assertions were concluded in a
coercive environment, particularly the Kabul 1921 understanding for foundation
of neighborly commercial relations, which not as it were marked but approved in
1922, and beneath which disobedience was traded by the agents of both states in
Kabul.

The boarder is not rejected by any other
party of the world except Afghanistan itself, making the Afghan case further
weakened.

No matter how much Afghanistan retaliates
over this matter, the Durand line is widely accepted as an international
boarder and the afghan claim will likely not bear fruit. The Afghans should
rather hold the British accountable for the “so said” unfair distribution and
not Pakistan, since Pakistan did not decide into this matter at all but was a
decision purely made between the Afghans and the British- rather battle the
British towards their claim and not make this a political issue more than a
legitimate claim.